Description
Book Synopsis"Paralogues", which takes its title from the Greek word for 'ballads', is the British debut of an original Canadian poet and editor. Evan Jones explores Greek mythology, Roman and Byzantine history, art and travel, from contemporary perspectives. The myth of Actaeon is re-imagined in three ways, and "Paralogues" concludes with a sequence retelling the Byzantine folk ballad "Constantine and Arete". Translation is central to the collection, from the modern Greek of Miltos Sachtouris to the Austrian German of Raoul Schrott. Readers encounter people and places real and imagined: the lonely figure of the poet Cavafy in Victorian Liverpool, God in post-war Paris, the landscapes of Europe and North America at once familiar and unfamiliar.
Trade Review'Evan Jones is an intelligent, allusive poet who has elegantly synthesized his roots in Greek culture. These quietly serious poems throw up glimpses of dream and myth, and do so in a context of real thoughtfulness, free of rhetoric but rich in formal control.' - Fiona Sampson
